Edge

me with careless assumptions but he beat into our heads the same principle. Though Loving might have been identifiedin West Virginia as the man hired to target Kessler, we’d had no independent proof that in fact he was the attacker. Until now.
    Freddy added, “We also got some prints on the tape he’d used on Knox and his wife. Just a partial but it’s him.”
    My principals, I could see or sense, were all staring at me, wanting information.
    “The Knoxes?” I sure didn’t want to deliver the news that the wife was dead.
    “Both’ll be okay, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “It is.”
    I told the Kesslers this.
    “Oh.” Joanne exhaled and lowered her head. She whispered, “Thank you.” The household hadn’t seemed religious but I got the impression she herself might be and was sending aloft a prayer.
    “And?” I asked Freddy, meaning: Did either of them say anything more?
    “Other than the ID, squat. We could put ’em in a room with speakers blaring wall-to-wall Captain and Tennille and they wouldn’t talk.”
    “Impression?” I asked, ignoring the pointless quip.
    “They really don’t know diddle. We could maybe find out what he’s wearing but how helpful would that be? I submit, not very.”
    I asked him if the weapon in Knox’s hand could lead us anywhere.
    He gave a sour laugh. “Stolen years ago. Evidence Response’s been over, under and through the car, the yard, compost heaps and recycling bins in the whole goddamn neighborhood. The woods where the partner was spotted too. No leads. Zero, zip. They don’teven know where Loving and his boyfriend parked. Not a single fucking tire tread or fiber. And here I swore he couldn’t be there for another couple of hours. Did I get this one wrong or what?”
    I believed I had the answer to Loving’s early arrival in Fairfax. “I’m guessing he got an edge on the clerk at the motel in West Virginia and had him say Loving’d checked out at eight but he’d really left around four or five this morning.”
    “You win the cee-gar, Corte. All he had to do was mention the name of the clerk’s daughter and what middle school she was in.”
    Loving did the same amount of homework as Claire duBois did. And, as I had years before, I felt a perverse admiration for his methodology and meticulousness.
    I continued, “But the light-colored sedan was his, legit, because there were other witnesses at the motel who’d seen it earlier.”
    “Yup squared.” He then added that the Charleston field office had gone through the room carefully. “Nothing.”
    I looked behind me and then executed another series of evasive turns.
    No beige car. Nothing out of the ordinary. Locals doing what they did on Saturday. Driving to stores, fast food restaurants for a treat after errands, movies, kids’ soccer games and tae kwon do lessons.
    “What do you think, Freddy? Real or a diversion?” I couldn’t decide what Loving’s strategy at the house had been. Did he really want to kill us and take Ryan and his family hostage? Or was it a feint? Did he have something else in mind, something I couldn’t figure out?
    Freddy mused, “Real? . . . I’d say so. I think he wanted to get in fast, get Ryan and get out. He could’ve pulled it off too. If we’d gone out the back, like he wanted, that’d be it. They’d be writing our eulogies right now and Kessler’d have bamboo under his fingernails. Or more likely his wife’s. . . . Oh, and I’ll give you my opinion about the sister, son. She gives blondes a bad name.”
    “Next step?”
    “Find the primary.” I’d told Ryan that he’d possibly been targeted by mistake but I didn’t believe it. Henry Loving wouldn’t make an error like that. I wanted to find who’d hired him and what information Ryan had that was so important to him . . . or them.
    I told Freddy I’d start looking into that when we landed and I disconnected the call.
    As soon as I did, my phone buzzed and I listened to the numbers read off by the caller ID voice. It was the federal prosecutor, Jason Westerfield. He would have heard the news—that his hero cop, a star witness in a case that didn’t exist yet, had nearly been kidnapped amid a shootout in Fairfax County. Westerfield was the last person in the world I wanted to talk to at the moment. I didn’t hit ANSWER .
    I noted Ryan was staring into the side-view mirror.
    I said, “Detective Kessler?”
    “Call me Ryan.”
    “Okay, Ryan. Thanks for covering our flank